


In Defense of Little Surprises

by sleepdraught



Series: In Dreams and Devotion [2]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 03 Season 02: The Unsleeping City Chapter II, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Fluff, Parent-Child Relationship, Romance, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 10:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30121179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepdraught/pseuds/sleepdraught
Summary: Stress could be running her body ragged, and getting her cycle a little messed up is no big thing.That excuse stops feeling reasonable after another two-and-a-half weeks.There is no axiom, no law, no magical spell, that could've prepared Esther for what was to come. All she can do is hold Ricky's hand, take a breath, and hope everything will turn out okay.
Relationships: Ricky Matsui/Esther Sinclair
Series: In Dreams and Devotion [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2216688
Comments: 1
Kudos: 39





	In Defense of Little Surprises

She tries not to panic, when her period comes late. Esther’s seen far too many movies (she had to _really_ catch up on just about everything in the past three years), and she’s aware of the trope. The classic dramatic moment where the period is late, the baby panic sets in, only for it all to be a close call a few scenes later, a _whew_ moment where someone can wipe sweat off their brow, the girl can tear up as she admits she was excited to be a mother, and she and whatever generic male love interest can hold each other and proclaim their desire to be a family— _not yet, perhaps, but one day._

Yeah. She’s not too impressed.

So she waits a few days, knowing that there are a million and one factors for it to come late. Stress is the biggest one, and _boy_ is Esther under a lot of it these days. Trying to run circles around Tony and the monastery is one thing, but so is all the weird shit going on with the Umbral Arcana, and with _Nod,_ and with the Deep Dreaming and everything that could entail, and—well, anyways, stress could be running her body ragged, and getting her cycle a little messed up is no big thing.

That excuse stops feeling reasonable after another two-and-a-half weeks. Esther decides to ignore it.

After it’s been over a month, she has to suck it up and buy a pregnancy test. It’s stupid how nervous she feels when she goes to the pharmacy, like she’s scared of being caught doing something wrong, like she’s some kind of teenager who’s now facing the judgmental wrath of the dangers of premarital sex. God knows her mother feels that way—the hints about jewelry shopping are getting so blatant that Ricky _has_ to figure them out at some point—but she’s a grown woman and it’s ridiculous that she has to feel embarrassed about it at all.

She reads the instructions on the side of the box carefully, every single tiny word, over and over again, mostly to distract herself from the growing nerves. She follows each step meticulously, timing the waiting interval down to the second.

The fear doesn’t truly set in for her until it’s time to look at the strip. Immediately before, this had all been sort of clinical—the sort of detached, calm, sobering way she used to do everything, when she had to be careful, before her curse broke, before she had Ricky and her mom and grandma and could build a life for herself, a true one—but now her hand is shaking and she genuinely doesn’t know what sort of answer she’s hoping for.

She doesn’t give herself time to find out. She takes a breath and looks.

Hm.

Well.

Esther Sinclair is going to have a baby.

She casts a minor illusion on the test to make it look like a box of Junior Mints. Fuck if she knows why, but she does it. Then she dumps the thing into the wastepaper basket and curls up into a ball in the corner of the bathroom.

It’s too soon. It’s too soon, right? She’s only technically had her life back for three years, she has so much work to focus on at Gramercy, war against isolation and loss itself seems to be on the horizon, she—she’s not even _married_ yet—well, okay, not that _that_ really matters, but as the realization settles in hard and heavy and she thinks of what mom and grandma will say when she tells them it makes her laugh, weak and pitifully, that out of all the things she has to worry about, the fact that she doesn’t have a pointless, stupid ring on her finger is one of them.

 _I need to tell Ricky,_ she thinks, and she slowly starts to rise. _I need to tell him. He—we’ll figure this out together. If we—want this._

Yes. That’s what she’ll do. Ricky Matsui might not wield the Questing Blade anymore, but he’s never lost that golden heroic light inside of him, that warmth and surety that Esther’s clung to like a rock during her emotional, unstable road to recovery post curse break. Even if he doesn’t have the answer, she’ll feel right with him. She always does.

“I’m home!” she hears him call. The front door closes. “Hey, you in the bathroom, hon?”

Esther jolts to her feet. “Y-yeah!” she calls back out to him. “Just a minute, I’m almost done.”

She washes her hands in the sink and doesn’t look at the wastepaper basket. When she opens the door and walks out to kiss Ricky on the cheek, she doesn’t say a thing.

*

It’s stupid. She knows it’s stupid, not to tell him immediately. But she doesn’t. She reads a dozen articles on early signs of pregnancy and takes a couple more tests, just in case the first one was a false positive. Luckily for her, Ricky doesn’t seem to notice the Junior Mints boxes in the bathroom’s garbage.

She thinks of all those sappy romantic dramas she watched, with their ridiculous plots and cringey declarations of love and moments that make her weep because she’s still so vulnerable to even _feeling_ emotions, so hypersensitive to sorrow. She thinks of the girl who’s maybe disappointed that she wasn’t pregnant after all, the guy who says the same, the guy who says that maybe one day it’ll be real, and they could be a family.

And maybe a part of her doesn’t say anything right away because Ricky _is_ that kind of guy. He’s the kind of heartthrob, gorgeous-lead-in-the-romcom guy who would drop everything the moment she even _hints_ that she might be pregnant, who—regardless of whether they were wanting a kid or not, regardless of whether they’re ready, if _he’s_ ready to be a father—he’d be there in an instant, holding her hand at the doctor’s, buying a crib, a highchair, mobiles, teething toys. He’d ask her if they should paint the walls of the nursery pink or blue, then after a lengthy lesson about gender hypernormativity from Pete he’d probably settle with purple or green, maybe even a pop of fireman red _(he never did lose that little firefighter heart,_ she thinks fondly, so full of love for this brilliant and warm and beautiful man who entered her life). He’d buy every single childcare book he can get his hands on, every sort of manual for new parents, expecting parents. He’d get child psychology books and take notes, and sign them up early for prenatal yoga or infant swimming or-or _something_ , and he’d be so—

He would be so _crushed_ if Esther were to lose the baby.

It’s not uncommon, she reasons with herself. A miscarriage is totally possible, especially in the first trimester. Especially if war is at their feet. Absolutely plausible. If it happens, it happens, and it wouldn’t—at that point, it wouldn’t even be a human baby, it would just be a fetus, a _thing_ of cells and half-formed organs and—

And Esther wants this baby. She remembers vague daydreams from years back, back when she was a cursed Sinclair, when her feelings for Ricky and his feelings for her could only be that, just feelings. She remembers seeing interracial families walking down the streets of New York and wondering what her children might look like before she can stop herself. Dreaming of little babies with her hair and Ricky's smile, Ricky's nose, Ricky's everything.

And if anything were to happen—if this was all going to be for nothing—well, wouldn’t it be better for her to carry all the hurt than put Ricky, her sweet, perfect Ricky Matsui, through the pain with her?

That’s what she tells herself anyway, although she thinks the truth is far plainer and far simpler. The truth is that she’s scared out of her mind, scared to be a mother, scared to want something so beautiful and bittersweet and challenging and life-changing. Scared for her life to change when life still seems so new and scary on its own.

And right now, she’s too scared to tell Ricky just yet. Because telling him will make it real.

The doorbell rings. She pulls herself together as best she can, sniffling a little, not really interested in talking to whichever Gramercy wizard needs her opinion or go-ahead on something— _god, she misses Alejandro so much_ —

But it’s not just a Gramercy wizard waiting at the door.

It’s Gramercy wizards and Tony Simos, Tony with an ugly look in his eye, and she can’t afford to think of anything else.

*

Esther can barely remember the ensuing battle. Even after coming out of her banishment, the rest of the fight against Tony, her traitors, then the final defense against Null down in the City Hall Subway Station, none of it feels real. It’s a blur of her Staff of Sorrows, of static and magic and drones and swordplay. And then Kingston’s dragon egg hatches, a beautiful little baby appears in its place, and Null is thrown far back into the Dreaming, its power diminished, kept at bay once more by the strength of a dragon present in New York City. It's all a haze in her mind.

The clearest memory she has of that night is of Ricky, ripping an apple in half to expose a ring inside, and the cheers that ensued from all her friends around them.

It’s not what she expected. Not exactly the proposal she’d thought of. She’s always half-assumed that Ricky would just casually pop the question one day, no dramatic show of love because that’s not his style. Just the two of them in bed in the morning sun— _d’you wanna get married?_ he'd ask, laughing and repeating the question when Esther mumbles out something in confusion.

Or maybe she’d be the one to do it, to go out and get a ring and drop down on one knee. She’s always secretly thought that idea would be rather fun, flipping the roles like that. Oh, her mother would _hate_ it, but everyone else would get a hell of a laugh out of it and Ricky would probably love the idea of being proposed to just as much as her.

But there it is, a beautiful engagement ring tucked inside the core of an apple in a secret subway station, and it’s perfect.

She doesn’t even have to ask if Ricky’s ready to be a father, if he wants this baby. The moment the word _“yes”_ leaves her lips he has her gathered up in his arms, hands shaking slightly from the adrenaline rush of battle, maybe from relief, maybe from joy. He’s laughing breathlessly against her neck, mumbling _I-love-yous_ into her hair.

But she asks anyway, later, in the quiet aftermath as they’re walking home (Pete and Cody wanted to get group chipotle, because it’s right after a major battle, what else can you do except unpack everything during a group chipotle, which Kingston emphatically refused— _“I’m holding my baby son in my arms right now, guys, Jesus, I have to get him to Liz!”_ —and Sofia and Dale were busy discussing where they were going to live, now that Dale’s come back from the dead and their old house had burned down, so everyone sort of split apart with promises to have chipotle tomorrow). Ricky’s got her hand in his, holding onto it with uncharacteristic tightness, like at any moment she might get banished away again.

She looks up at him and asks, “Are you sure we’re ready to be parents?”

Ricky, bless his heart, actually seems startled by the question. He’s always had so much more faith in them and their abilities together than she did. “Do you think we aren’t?”

“I—no—well—” she stutters for a moment, “I’m just … worried. You know. There were traitors in Gramercy, and—and I’ll just be so busy fixing everything Tony had ruined, and you have your job down at Helping Hands, and I—do we even have the _time?_ Will we be able to raise this baby to the best of our abilities? Will we—” she chokes up at the last second, dammit, “—will we be _good parents?”_

“Oh, I’ve already thought about all that,” Ricky says casually. “I’ll be a stay-at-home dad so you can focus on Gramercy.”

“What—?”

“I mean, y’know, I’d still like to go down to Helping Hands and—heh—give them a helping hand now and again, but yeah, I figured I could spend most of my time at home. And maybe get into, like, kids after-school programs or something, I think I’d like that. Your work is so important, I don’t wanna make you feel like you have to stay away from it.” He shrugs and laughs. “How hard can it be, to be a parent? You love them and you keep them safe and you make sure that they’re ready to face the world someday without flinching. We do that basically all the time; the only difference is it’ll be _our_ kid, and we'll be there for them whenever they need us.”

Esther squeezes Ricky’s hand back, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks once more.

He’s always had a way of making her feel like everything will be good and right.

*

Sofia has her baby first. It’s a rough labour, one that Sofie blames on the fact that her baby girl—her Catherine “Cat” Lee—is sure to grow up with the same fiery personality as her momma. Even as a newborn, little Cat has her mother’s eyes, a brilliant blue and green set like jewels in her little pink face, blessed by the feline bodega spirit from birth. Through the Umbral Arcana, Esther sees the faint glow of celestial wings protruding from Cat’s back, more of an outline than anything corporeal. Dale won’t stop staring down at her in wonder, pressing her close to his chest while Sofia recovers, La Gran Gata purring at his feet.

When he asks if Ricky wants to hold the baby, it’s the first time in years Esther’s ever seen her fiancé get nervous.

As predicted, Gabriela and Patricia are torn between being overjoyed that Esther is pregnant and crestfallen that it’s technically a shotgun wedding. They almost insist on throwing some big affair, but Esther puts her foot down at that.

Her marriage to Ricky Matsui is a quiet thing, done at city hall with as little expense put in as possible. She wears an old wedding gown passed down from her grandmother, in a style at least fifty years out of fashion. Ricky’s in a suit he must’ve borrowed from Kingston. They repeat their vows, slip rings on their fingers, and sign a little paper, and they become husband and wife—keeping their own last names, though.

Some might say it’s a pitiful excuse for a wedding. A pathetic little affair for what should be Esther’s biggest, most important day.

But in the audience is a teary-eyed Sofia and an even more teary-eyed Dale, holding their own little bundle of joy. JJ is openly weeping, along with the Kugriches. Liz and Kingston are in the front row, beaming, sweet little Langston watching the proceedings with a wide-eyed curiosity Esther knows will never go away. Pete’s grinning from ear-to-ear, Maddie Park at his side, and Iga’s whole family is there as well. Cody is trying his hardest to pretend he’s not feeling emotional over the whole affair, and Rowan is doing her best to coax him into admitting it.

And beyond even that—through the Umbral—there’s a massive brick golem clapping his hands like the sound of two large boulders smashing against one another. There’s a winged statue applauding and squealing joyfully. There are miniscule clockwork gnomes cheering from dragon-faced trains up by the ceiling, and from outside the window, a unicorn, cockroach, and pigeon are watching excitedly. Distantly, she can hear the sound of two stone lions roaring in celebration.

Her dress doesn’t fit right around the growing bump of her stomach. Ricky is in someone else’s tux.

But it’s the best wedding she could’ve ever asked for, and when everyone piles into the train that takes them to Nod for the afterparty/honeymoon, Esther can’t imagine a better day, surrounded by the people she loves most.

*

Unlike Sofia, Esther’s birthing process is so smooth it’s almost ridiculous. They have a home birth, her mom and grandma by her side, Ricky holding her hand, and the whole thing takes less than an hour. Her baby is so quiet Esther’s almost scared something is wrong—but she coos the moment Ricky has her, his hands so large against the tiny little creature that just came out of Esther’s body.

They didn’t bother learning the sex of the baby before this, deciding they’ll be equally happy no matter what so it might as well be a surprise. But when Ricky says in a quiet, marvelling tone, “It’s a _girl,_ Esther”, she bursts into tears and thinks _of course, of_ course, _how could it be any other way?_

She holds her, for hours. She gets dried off and dressed and wrapped up in their softest blanket, and Ricky holds her and she holds their baby, and for the longest time the two of them just watch as their little girl sleeps in comfortable silence.

“We should probably start thinking of a name,” Esther whispers with a quiet laugh. That, too, they had planned on deciding after the birth.

Ricky gives her a gentle squeeze. Holds her like he’s holding diamonds.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea for one,” he says.

*

Alejandra Matsui-Sinclair is the prettiest little baby Esther’s ever seen. That’s probably her motherly bias talking, but Al’s going to inherit Ricky’s insane good looks for sure. Esther can barely walk her stroller around the park without mothers crowding around her to compliment her “little angel”, and if Ricky’s the one out there? _Whoof,_ it’s a two-hit combo for all those desperate middle-aged bench warmers and gossipers.

Compared to Langston’s charming curiosity, or Cat’s boundless spirit, Al is calm and quiet. So quiet that sometimes Esther has to run to the nursery to even check she’s still breathing; she doesn’t cry half as much as any baby Esther's ever heard of, and she has a habit of staring at any open textbooks like she can pick apart its contents. For a baby who can't even lift her head up yet, she observes the world around her like a scientist performing fieldwork—Esther’s influence, obviously—but when she smiles, it’s all Ricky.

“Look at this!” Ricky says, delightedly, as Al holds onto his finger with her chubby hand. “Our little girl has one tight grip—she’s gonna be so strong, when she grows up.”

“Of course she will,” Esther says, leaning over to kiss her husband (her _husband, her husband_ ) on the forehead. “She takes after her father.”

Ricky reaches out with his free hand to grab her wrist before she can leave and return to her studies. “Nah,” he says, smiling, and gently pulls her over to kiss her knuckles. “She takes after her mother.”

*

The kids grow up together, and everybody calls each other “family” so much Esther has a feeling the children might actually think they’re all related. They start crawling together. They begin to babble together. Esther and Sofia are both there when Langston clearly calls Liz “mom” for the first time (Liz laughs through her tears—“God, I’m so fuckin’ old, to be called mom at this point,” but the way she smiles and the way her eyes shine makes the crow’s feet and grey hairs so effortlessly lovely). Langston adores it when Rowan tells him the story of when she and Kingston fought a mummy, a story Rowan is not unwilling to repeat. Cat, as active and energetic as her mother, is insistent on grabbing anybody within reach so she can practice standing up on her little legs. Pete _loves_ that job, and so does Iga’s kids. Cody gets nervous and fidgety, but he can’t bring himself to deny any of the children; he just sits there and grimaces as Cat grabs hold of his hands and wobbles up to her feet, and complains that her hands are sticky.

Esther's little girl takes a bit longer to start standing, but when she does she barely falters. Within days, she’s able to take a few toddling steps. The first time she manages to cross the room and into her daddy’s arms, Ricky has to get JJ to film it, he’s crying so hard.

Just like she thought, Al’s hair is like Esther’s, thick and coiled, and Esther does her hair the way she remembers her mom doing for her as a child. Ricky takes classes, so he can learn how to do hairstyles for black girls. He practices some of them on Esther, and Al seems to love it whenever her mommy's hair looks like hers. Ricky fills up his phone with pictures of them laughing and playing together in their matching styles.

Langston and Cat both start talking long before Al, but Esther isn’t worried. She sees that awareness, that quiet and sharp look in her baby’s eyes, and she’s not one to throw herself into a panic.

Sure enough, when Al does eventually speak, she speaks in full sentences, slow and careful, overcompensating to sound out everything correctly with tiny lips and tongue and teeth that aren’t accustomed to proper pronunciation.

“I wanna play baseball with daddy,” is her first coherent sentence. And, ever daddy’s little girl, Ricky promptly takes their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and starts showing her how to hold Esther’s old bat, how to bunt, how to hit a homerun. He obviously is doing most of the lifting, but Al takes to learning how to swing it with a delighted, fearless verve she has for everything. She isn't scared of failure or risk.

“We’ll need to get something lighter, for her to play with,” Ricky tells Esther. “Maybe like a wiffle ball bat?”

“I’ll see what the store has,” she says, grabbing her wallet and coat.

“Make sure the colour is gender neutral!” he calls after her.

*

“You’ll need to get some sleep, alright?” Esther says as she tucks Al into her crib. “We’ll have to be up bright and early to get ready for the barbecue tomorrow.”

Al is two years old and smart and beautiful. She’s got Ricky’s eyes and smile, but so much of her features belong to Esther. That surprises her. She used to dream of her children taking more after Ricky, hoping that they’d have so little of her and her sorrow and so much more of Ricky’s radiant light.

“Will grandpapa be there?” Al asks sleepily, turning over in her crib.

Esther is thrown for a moment, trying to figure out who grandpapa could be. Her dad’s been out of the picture for years, and Al calls Ricky’s father _jiiji_. “I—what? Who?”

“Grandpapa.” Al looks up at her with those brilliant brown eyes, eyes that see so much and so clear. “The one with the wings. The one you and daddy named me after.”

“O-oh.” Her voice is getting choked up, she can hear it. She struggles to swallow down the lump that has instantly lodged itself at the base of her throat, not to let the pain and happiness and bittersweet memories show too much. As mature as she seems sometimes, Al is still only a two-year-old; she’ll for sure start crying if Esther cries. “I-I see. You, um, you see him sometimes?”

“Yeah. Only sometimes, usually in the sky. He smiles a lot and is nice.” Al tilts her head for a moment, thinking, then says, “He makes me think of that other man. The big one who comes to see Uncle Kingston.”

“The big man? Which one?”

“The one that sometimes looks like a wall? He’s made of bricks when I look at him sometimes, and Langston says that his eyes glow and he’s lived a long, long, _long_ time.”

Esther’s trained herself to make note of the Umbral Arcana that swirls around New York City. She can see it if she focuses, the faint shimmer of abjurative magic that passes over people’s eyes. Since when did that shimmer of Umbral look so faint, so thin, over Al?

“Well, that’s Willy, sweetheart.” She strokes her finger along Al’s soft cheek. “And you know what? You’ll see them both tomorrow, at the barbecue. Willy _and_ your grandpapa. So let’s go to sleep, okay?”

“’Kay,” Al yawns, eyes already fluttering closed.

Esther turns off the lights, leaving the crescent moon nightlight and glow-in-the-dark star stickers to soothe the darkness, quietly shuts the door, then pads back out to the living room to curl up with Ricky on the couch for a while longer. He puts an arm around her immediately and says, “Out like a light?”

“She’s so well-behaved it scares me, sometimes,” Esther snorts. “I think she has your temperament.” And because she’s making it a habit to not keep anything from Ricky, not since the pregnancy, she says, “You know she sees Alejandro sometimes?”

“You’re _kidding_.” Ricky slowly starts to smile. “He’s been coming down to see her?”

“I guess so. She knows she has an angel great-grandfather. And she sometimes sees the real Willy, too. I think she’s seeing through the Umbral Arcana. I think all the kids are.”

“Huh.” Ricky mulls over that for a second. “I guess we’ve got a new head of the Gramercy Occult Society in our midst.”

“She’s only _two,_ Ricky, who knows what she’ll do with her life,” she says with a laugh.

But for a moment, she sees it. She sees her daughter, Alejandra Matsui-Sinclair, grown up and powerful. She sees her grow up to become fierce and determined and curious like her mother, brave and optimistic and beautiful like her father. She sees her with Langston and Cat at her side, connected and close and together for the rest of their lives. She sees her surrounded by family and friends and all the arbitrary strings that tie those two things together in exactly the same way and mean the exact same thing, people who love her, people who will never let her feel lost or alone.

Esther is in a cozy apartment, her mother and grandmother just a phone call away, sitting next to her husband, her daughter sleeping in the other room.

It's going to be a bright, sunny day tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> And to think, I wrote a paragraph about Esther dreaming about having beautiful biracial babies with Ricky in my last fic. Of course this needed a continuation.
> 
> Y'all know where to find me! Catch me at marshmallsy on all social media, including [tumblr](https://marshmallsy.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/marshmallsy).


End file.
